Houston Daily

University of Houston chemistry professor Judy Wu has been awarded a $1.96 million federal grant to study how light affects the structure, energy, and reactivity of molecules. The four-year project is funded by the National Institutes of Health and aims to create molecular "blueprints" that can help chemists design molecules which change predictably when exposed to light.

Wu's research will focus on developing conceptual frameworks for mapping how molecules behave in their short-lived, high-energy states after absorbing light. These insights could lead to advances in areas such as light-controlled therapies, drug delivery systems, and new materials that respond to light.

“Light doesn’t just energize a molecule, it changes the rules the molecule follows,” Wu said. “Our goal is to decode those rules and give chemists a blueprint for designing molecules that behave predictably and usefully when they interact with light.”

The project uses computational quantum chemistry modeling rather than traditional laboratory experiments. Wu describes her approach as “small-data chemistry,” focusing on detailed studies of individual molecules instead of analyzing large datasets. She believes this method can reveal important chemical behaviors that broader statistical models might miss.

“We don’t reduce thousands of molecules into dots on a plot,” Wu said. “There is extraordinary insight you can gain simply from looking closely at a molecule.”

Wu’s team hopes their predictive models will support the development of technologies like targeted drug delivery systems, molecular photoswitches for medical imaging and therapy, and smart materials that alter their properties under light exposure.

“Many transformative technologies rely on molecules that change shape or properties when they absorb light,” Wu said. “If we know how to design these molecules, we can control how much energy they store, how fast they release the captured energy and what transformations they can initiate.”

The research addresses fundamental questions about storing and releasing chemical energy in light-activated molecules—an area considered challenging within physical organic chemistry.